CMS board's new leadership is not so novel

Hi there. Welcome to O-Pinion, the Observer editorial board's blog. I'm associate editor Fannie Flono, your host for today.

There's a lot of buzz locally on the leadership change for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board. Newly-elected at-large board members Ericka Ellis-Stewart and Mary McCray were voted in by colleagues on the nine-member board as chair and vice-chair of the board. They made a little history but not in the way many might think.

This is not the first time a first-time politician has been chair. Eric Davis, who Ellis-Stewart replaced, was a novice too. It's not the first time two African Americans have been chair and vice chair. Arthur Griffin and Wilhelmenia Rembert did so more than a decade ago. And neither McCray nor Ellis-Stewart is the first woman or African American - or African American women - to hold their posts.

Phillip O. Berry was the first African American to chair the board. Winthrop University's Rembert was the first African American woman to be vice chair and later to become chair.

The two aren't even the first two women to hold the both leadership roles in the same year. That happened in 2002 when Rembert and board member Louise Woods were chair and vice chair respectively.

So what's the history? They are the first two African American women to hold both leadership roles at the same time.

The vote for Ellis-Stewart and McCray follows a tradition in Mecklenburg politics where the general election's top vote-getters of the majority party are usually elected by their peers to lead the body. That's one reason so many people were irked by Democrat Harold Cogdell last week when he ousted fellow Democrat Jennifer Roberts who was the top vote-getter for the majority party for the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners.

The CMS board has broken with tradition in the past, most recently with Eric Davis' elevation to board chair. And it wasn't clear until late Tuesday what would rule the day this year either. Board members were in talks and undecided for most of the day. But in the end they came out publicly unified behind Ellis-Stewart and McCray in an 8-0 vote (Tim Morgan's District 6 seat is vacant since he was elected to an at-large seat in November.) Such unity was not on display back in 2002 when Rembert and Woods were elected to lead the board. They got a bare majority of five votes.

Hopefully, the unified vote Tuesday night signals that this CMS board will work cooperatively with each other to tackle the serious challenges facing the schools.